Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat (王瑞傑) yesterday announced additional support measures of S$8 billion (US$5.84 billion) to cushion the blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, extending wage subsidies and aiming to shore up the hard-hit aviation and hospitality sectors.
The new set of measures, announced almost three months after the last package, adds to Singapore’s total pledged pandemic aid of almost S$100 billion, Heng, who is also minister of finance, said in a taped speech.
While Singapore has managed to bring virus cases under control, the global economy “remains very weak,” Heng said.
Photo: AFP
“We must continue to adapt to the rapidly changing situation. We designed our measures to give us flexibility for adjustments as the crisis progresses. Some of these measures are ending soon,” he said.
The latest measures would not require any additional use of past reserves beyond what was already approved, Heng said.
Unused expenditures from earlier budgets would help fund the latest measures, allowing the government to narrow the projected budget deficit this fiscal year by S$100 million since the fourth package was announced in May, to S$74.2 billion.
Further support was deemed necessary as the city-state has fallen into a technical recession, retail and hospitality sectors are struggling to recover from months of mobility restrictions, and officials have warned of further retrenchments through year-end.
Singapore’s economy shrank a record 42.9 percent on an annualized basis in the second quarter from the previous three months, data last week showed, with Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing (陳振聲) warning there could be “recurring waves of infection and disruption.”
Export figures released yesterday showed tentative signs of recovery in July, with non-oil domestic shipments jumping 6 percent from the same time last year, beating estimates for a second straight month.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
RSS